


serve you well

by endquestionmark



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-09
Updated: 2016-06-09
Packaged: 2018-07-13 23:24:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7142459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/endquestionmark/pseuds/endquestionmark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So: "Anything you need," Vax says, and means it with all the fervency of someone with nothing left to barter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	serve you well

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [this prompt](https://criticalkink.dreamwidth.org/700.html?thread=16316#cmt16316). Spoilers through episode 24. Look: I don't know what you expected. "You", here, refers to [Cat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/indigostohelit).

So: "Anything you need," Vax says, and means it with all the fervency of someone with nothing left to barter. "Whatever you need," he adds, and means that as well, and knows it. For nobles, they're very attractive; Lord Briarwood carries himself lightly, but with gravitas, and Lady Briarwood is very poised. She has about her a certain air of determination, of the willingness to do whatever it takes to achieve her ends, and she stands up very straight and looks very amused.

In the darkness, Vax realizes that he has lost track of Lord Briarwood, and becomes suddenly aware of himself and his disadvantages. Slouched posture, poor footing, and of course Lady Briarwood is still holding him in place: he meets her eyes, and she shakes her head. "Don't bother," she says. "And, please, do call me Delilah. You are a guest, after all." There is a very quiet sound — like the shift of floorboards, and the drag of heavy cloth — but Vax can't quite place it until he thinks: somebody is behind him. After that, it's all too easy. The hem of a traveling cloak, and the tread of someone who moves with a preternatural grace; Lord Briarwood doesn't so much as lay a hand on Vax, and does not, in fact, touch him at all.

It isn't necessary. Vax goes absolutely still, and doesn't even have to think about it: he simply freezes instinctively, as if he'll be able to fade into the shadows if he just doesn't move. The reflex is one acquired over long years, and a habit of which he's never been inclined to break himself. Between rooftops and cobbled alleys and everything in between, at the footsteps of a guard or an unexpected movement or a shout in the distance, stillness has saved Vax's life more often than not. Faintly, as if even the thought might give him away, Vax thinks that he isn't even trying to steal anything this time. He'll be happy if he only gets himself out of the deal.

"Oh, you needn't worry about that," Lady Briarwood — Delilah — says, and steps forward. For a moment, Vax isn't sure whether she is referring to him as the subject or the object of the sentence, and catches his breath just in case. "Both of you," she adds, and he exhales. Behind him, Lord Briarwood leans forward and, very precisely, lays his hand on Vax's throat over the pulse there. If Vax was not already holding himself so still, the touch would be more than enough to freeze him on its own; Lord Briarwood is very solid, and very certain, of himself and of his grip and of the fact that Vax won't fight. Delilah frowns. "Sylas?"

Very slowly, he removes his hand from Vax's throat, and leaves him unmoored once again. "I can wait," he says, as if it costs him an effort.

"Thank you," Delilah says, and steps closer, smoothing her hands down Vax's shoulders and then back up to the clasp of his cloak. She toys with it for a moment, fingers almost translucent next to the dark iron, and then slips it open with a deftness bordering on sleight of hand. "That's better," she says, voice still soft, and Sylas lifts Vax's cloak from his shoulders and lays it aside. If not for the hold that Delilah still maintains, Vax would shift, and recenter himself; as it is, he is left off-balance, curiously light and unable to shake the feeling that he is more vulnerable now. He is much more aware, certainly, of the way that Sylas has flanked him, and is staying just out of sight.

Vax stands like that — braced for a blow; or, worse, a gentle touch — for a long minute, and then there are hands on his shoulders, gathering his hair and pulling it back. "Oh, if you must," Delilah sighs, and steps back. "Perhaps he'll be more tractable afterwards." She hums under her breath, and leans against the table, and crosses her arms. "Try not to make a mess, darling."

Vax flinches at that — _darling_ — because that's Vex's word, it's hers; it doesn't belong here, and neither does she. When Vex says _darling_ , she does it as easy as winking. Delilah says it to Sylas, and it sounds like nothing at all, and because of that Vax can't help but hear it as a declaration of war. To be that casual, that cursory with affections, Vax thinks that they must run deep, and he can't help but think of the undertow. _Try not to make a mess_ : beyond that he doesn't think much of it, because he is doing his best to not think at all.

He goes easily and wholly when Sylas tugs him backwards, as a result, pulled entirely off-balance, and staggers. In that moment of uncertainty, falling out of Delilah's hold, Sylas pulls him upright, and Vax thinks: _oh_.

The pain takes a moment to register, because it feels so wrong. Vax has taken bad falls, and been sliced open with everything from his own daggers to broken glass, and suffered more kinds of magical damage than he cares to think about. Whatever Sylas is doing is worse, because it's new — as if Vax is being drawn thin, and pulled to nothing — and he feels feverish and cold at once. He staggers again, and Sylas catches him as if he weighs nothing at all, and there is warmth at Vax's throat. He presses unsteady fingers to it where it has run down along his collarbone, seeping under the edge of his armor and soaking into fabric, and in the dim moonlight his hand comes away sticky and stained black. "You," Vax starts. "You—" and then he wrenches himself away as best he can, although his knees give out halfway through and he falls.

"Be careful," Sylas says, and wipes at his mouth, smearing dark across the back of his hand and down along his wrist. "It would be a shame if you hurt yourself."

Sylas' voice is cultured, and his pronunciation refined; Vax recognizes the intonation and the structure of it from his time in Syngorn, and the little he and Vex had picked up from diplomacy before they had opted for a variety of their own. Where Vax has done his best to adulterate it, muddying the tonalities and drawing out the consonants, Sylas and Delilah speak as if it has never occurred to them to do anything else.

Looking up at Sylas in the moonlight, even as his vision blurs in and out of focus, Vax thinks that there's something of the noble beast to him, some strange decorum to his monstrousness. "Come here," Delilah says, and helps him to his feet, and then helps him to the bed. "Shall we? Much better," she adds, looking over her shoulder at Sylas, and he inclines her head. "Certainly more biddable, and it suits him so well." She fits her fingertips into the prints smeared onto his skin, and traces back up along his throat to where he still aches, the deep soreness of a bad bruise, and worries at it until the pain is sharp and new again. Her fingertips come away shining, and Delilah considers them for a moment before tilting her head. "Here," she says, holding her hand out flat as she might to a spooked animal, and waits until Vax, confused, leans forward. She nods in approval, and tips his head up with her other hand until he understands, and lets her press at the corner of his mouth.

With her free hand, she works at the buckles of his armor, and lays him bare a piece at a time. Vax drowns in the taste of his own blood, thick and salt and base, and somehow better for it; he's no stranger to a mouthful of blood, but there's something profane about the taste of it on her fingers. By the time he gasps his way clear, she has him stripped to his tunic, and Sylas is standing at her back. "Shall we?"

"I think so," Delilah says, and steps aside. Vax thinks about the way that Sylas had held him in place, effortless, and the weight of his hands, and the speed and surety with which he had moved. The same instinct that had frozen him in place makes him want to lean back and bare his throat, now; instead, Vax leans forward, because he's never been able to resist a challenge.

Sylas doesn't take him up on it immediately. Instead, he turns to Delilah, and lays a hand on her cheek; Vax thinks, again, about declarations of war, and wants to look away. Instead, he watches as they kiss: the smooth curve of Delilah's back, and the way that Sylas sways forward; the faint marks that she leaves on his throat where she holds him, and the way that her mouth is smeared dark as well when they finally break apart. Silas unfastens her dress, loosening the laces that keep it tied from the nape of her neck to the small of her back, and even in the moonlight Vax can see the faint scars across her throat and shoulders. He presses his fingers to the side of his own neck, and doesn't realize that he's doing it until he realizes that Sylas is watching him.

Vax pulls his hand away, then, but Sylas catches him by the wrist before he can do anything more, and bends to lick the blood from Vax's fingers. "If you don't mind," he says, and turns away to push Delilah's dress from her shoulders, following the line of her shoulders to settle his hands on her hips. He rests his chin on her shoulder, and turns his face into her throat. "Your turn."

"Are you quite sure you're done?" Delilah turns halfway to lay her hand on his cheek. "I'm sure he isn't."

"He can wait," Sylas rumbles, and Delilah half-smiles. It makes her look unbearably fond. "I can't, and neither should you."

Delilah turns. "All right," she says, and steps backward, leading him by touch. She sits at the very edge of the bed, and stops Sylas with a hand on his chest."You," she says to Vax. Her voice is — lilting, perhaps, that same light touch that makes it— so difficult to refuse. Another sort of hold, perhaps: "Your turn," she repeats, and Vax pushes himself to his feet unsteadily. He stands behind Sylas and takes his traveling cloak, yards of fine embroidered cloth, and undresses him with care. When he has nothing left to take, Vax stands still, and watches as Delilah pulls Sylas down to meet her; he snaps at her throat, playfully, and she swats at his shoulder.

Neither of them do anything as indecorous as laughing, but Vax hears it anyway. In the way that Delilah's hair comes loose across her shoulders, pins scattered on the sheets; in the way that Sylas is unafraid to be — almost — feral, in that same half-playful manner; in the practiced way that they fit together, Vax can see it, and then Sylas turns to him. "Come here," he says, voice rough and low and still just as rich, and Vax does. He crawls onto the bed, ungainly with pain and awkwardness, and Delilah holds out her hand.

For a moment, Vax isn't sure whether to kiss it or take it, and then Sylas snarls with impatience and yanks him forwards anyway. He falls awkwardly, and half-sprawled across Delilah, and then she does laugh aloud. "Darling," she says, and it doesn't sound right when she says it to him, but it isn't as bad as when she says it to Sylas. "Aren't you appealing." She moves to capture him, sliding one leg up to hook around the back of his knee, and Vax tries to hold himself up and fails. "No, no," Delilah says, and tangles her hand in his hair, strokes over the nape of his neck and the sensitive spot at the hinge of his jaw and just behind his ear. "Darling?"

"Of course," Sylas says, and slides one hand down Vax's side; he follows the curve of Vax's hip, and Vax gasps and jerks forward. "There," Sylas says, taking him in hand, and he has calluses — calluses, and big strong hands, and Vax can _smell_ the blood on him still — and Vax feels lightheaded with neediness. He tries to hide his face, turning away and looking down, and Delilah catches him by the chin and makes him look.

"All right," she says, and Vax nods, even as he struggles to catch his breath. Sylas presses with his thumb on the upstroke and Vax loses his focus again, vision going briefly dark. "Don't break him," Delilah adds, and Vax realizes that she isn't talking to him, but rather to Sylas, over his shoulder. "He's far too fine for that." She tugs Vax forward, hands on his hips, and Sylas guides him until he's pressed flush, skin to skin and fever-hot with the effort of keeping still.

Vax has always loved heights: the clarity that distance brings, and the possibility of flight, and the long, swooping inevitability of the fall. He turns his face into Delilah's shoulder, among the pinprick scars, and feels as if he is just losing his balance, caught in that first awful endless moment of weightlessness. She sets the pace — like gravity, irresistible and bound to be deadly — and Sylas holds Vax, right on that edge, slows him down and never lets him forget how close he is to falling.

Very close, as it turns out: Vax loses his grasp on sense, soon enough, and can no longer tell if he's afraid or transfixed; he gasps into the side of Delilah's throat, open-mouthed. She strokes his back, and murmurs something into his hair. It might be another casting, or it might just be the sort of endearments that Vax finds even harder to shake, in the right tone of voice, with the right tenderness. Either way, he feels as if she has closed her hand around his heart, through his ribs, and won't let up until he breaks; he closes his eyes, and she lets him, and comes with a sob.

Hands on his hips, and his shoulders, and in his hair: anything they want, he had said, and hadn't thought about himself as anything but impersonal barter. Vax doesn't have an easy time with _impersonal_ ; he never has. He enjoys giving himself away, because in the end he always manages to slip free, and steal himself back.

Now, though, Sylas catches him before he slumps, and pulls him upright. "My turn," he says, and bends to Vax's throat, where the blood has clotted unevenly. This time he breaks the skin a bare half-inch off, so that it aches just as badly, but stings with newness. Delilah sits up, her eyes bright even in the moonlight, and leans in to watch, and there it is: nothing to do now but wait, as the darkness rushes in, and fall.

A while later — it could be an hour, or it could be longer; the moonlight seems brighter now — Vax pushes himself up to his elbow. The covers fall away, and he presses idly at the marks bitten into his chest. There are a lot of them; the sheets are stained dark. "If that's all," he says. The words feel slow and heavy, and difficult to get out. "Will there be anything else?"

"Oh, darling," Delilah says, and it doesn't sound quite so wrong anymore. "You don't think we're going to let you get away, do you?" Sylas laughs, drowsily, and turns to watch. "No," she says, "we're keeping you, I think," and she doesn't have to hold him this time, either. Vax doesn't stand, and doesn't go; instead, he holds himself very still, and means it.


End file.
